1. Field of the Invention
This invention relates to turret coil winding machines, in which the coil supports are fixed on a stepwise rotatable turret which transfers them into a succession of fixed working stations distributed uniformly at the periphery of the turret, and the coil is wound by a winding head disposed in one of said working stations and comprising a wire guide which rotates about its own axis and slides along the same axis.
More particularly, the invention relates to a multiple wire guide forming part of the winding head, and arranged to simultaneously wind several coils on coil supports disposed side-by-side.
2. Description of the prior art
Normally, each winding head is provided with a single main drive shaft with which a single wire guide is associated, for example as described in my U.S. Pat. No. 3,402,903, and which winds only one coil at a time.
However, the need has been felt to wind several coils simultaneously.
Italian Pat. No. 792,849, of the same applicant, describes a special multiple wire guide comprising a plurality of wireguides rotatably mounted on a single support and rotated by the single main shaft which drives a normal winding head.
In said Italian Pat. No. 792,849, the individual wire guides of the multiple wire guide are each mounted independently rotatable on said common support, each integral with a driving gear wheel. All the gear wheels are in mutual engagement via a plurality of idle pinions and a further main pinion keyed on to the main drive shaft.
This method has been proved very effective, in particular as a simple method of converting a coil winding machine with a single wire guide into a machine with several wire guides able to wind several coils simultaneously.
However, it has technical limitations both with regard to the number of wire guides which can be mounted on said common support, and with regard to the minimum distance between one wire guide and another, which is determined by the overall size of the driving gear wheels and pinions. This method is also relatively costly due both to the cost of the drive gears and, in particular, the cost of the various bushes in which the individual wire guides rotate.